


i can't bear to be without you

by zennie



Series: you and i collide [4]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-16 11:58:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13635846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zennie/pseuds/zennie
Summary: After the break up, Alex and Maggie are lonely on Valentine's Day.For Sanvers Warriorsoftsawyer. Happy Valentine's Day!Also technically a fix-it so I'm adding it to my on-going series.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [softsawyer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/softsawyer/gifts).



Why is the measure of love loss?

Alex read that in a book, once, and it stuck with her for years. As a scientist, she understands the compulsion to measure, to reduce to equations, to quantify things, but she never really understood how love could be equated to loss.

Love, she reasoned, was measured by time together, the big and small of it, the holidays and birthdays, the morning coffee and the thousand insignificant text messages that mean I think about you when we’re apart, I miss you, I love you. Love had to be measured in giddiness, euphoria, and passion, not loss, loneliness, and regret.

All this theorizing happened before she fell in love, of course. Before she fell in love and lost that love.

Now she understands. The absence of love has taught her the precise dimensions of love, the weight of it, the amount she has given away, and how little she has left.

The metaphors, she realizes, the cliches, are wrong. Loss isn’t empty or hollow. It isn’t an absence. It’s a presence she drags with her throughout the day. It’s heavy, a weight on her limbs and on her heart, that she can’t lift. She can’t fling it away, casually, as she might toss a stained napkin or crumpled coffee cup.

Loss is with her, at every moment of every day. Inescapable. Ever present.

Her heart feels like it’s slowed, as if trying to stop the passage of time and keep her frozen in the moment before Maggie left. Every beat is an eternity away from love, another measure of loss.

Since Maggie left, Alex has spent the time, like the scientist she is, calibrating love. If she can get its measure, put it under a microscope and examine it, she can counteract it. Contain it.

If she can do that, maybe she can move on.

Tonight, though, moving on is the last thing on her mind.

Bright red boxes of cheap chocolates and the appearance of flowers outside of every corner store on her walk to work have haunted her all week. Kara tried to suggest alternative ‘celebrations,’ culminating in a Guy & Galentine dinner, inviting J’onn and Winn to join them. Alex pretended to run an experiment in the lab until she could sneak off alone to her apartment.

At home, in the dark, at least she can mourn in peace.

A knock sounds on the door, breaking into her thoughts. “Come in.” It’s unlocked, and she doesn't care. Her weapon is on the floor beside her, cold and black and menacing, but she doesn't reach for it. It's just her sister anyway, coming to check on her.

She doesn't open her eyes. She knows how pathetic she looks, slumped against the kitchen island with a bottle beside her, and she doesn't need to see the image she paints reflected in Kara’s eyes.

She hears the scratch of metal on the floor. Her gun, being moved away. To a safe place. Away from her. Next the bottle, scotch set on the counter. Maggie’s favorite, not hers. When a hand tightens on her glass, tries to take it from her fingers, she finally resists. She tugs it closer to her chest. “Leave it, Kara. Leave me. I'm fine, or I will be in the morning. I just need tonight.”

Fingers, soft, familiar, and not her sister’s, caress her cheek. She turns her head into the touch, the haunting smell of peaches filling her nose. Maggie’s favorite hand lotion.

“You know, I tried to leave,” a soft voice says in the darkness. “But here I am.”

“Maggie?” Alex reaches out, afraid she'll touch nothing but air, but her hand finds rough, worn leather, and above it, soft skin. Her eyes fly open.

In the darkness of her apartment, Maggie's white button down gleams, competing with the shine of tears in her eyes as the brightest thing in the room.

“What are you doing here?” Alex grips the lapel of her jacket, afraid to let go, afraid Maggie will evaporate into the ether of dreams.

“I don't really know,” Maggie confesses. She looks haggard, her cheeks hollow, her eyes dull behind the unshed tears. “I guess, I dunno…” Her words trail off, and she runs a nervous hand through her hair. “We should be spending our second Valentine's Day together, you know?” Her laugh is high, brittle. It’s the sound of pain. The sound of loss.

Maggie reaches up and snags the bottle of scotch before settling beside Alex on the floor. She takes a sip. “Since when do you leave your door unlocked?” she asks conversationally.

“I had my weapon.”

“You didn't have it ready when I walked in. You didn't even look at who came in the door.”

“I thought you were Kara.”

“I wasn’t Kara.”

“I'm not suicidal if that’s what you are thinking. I’m just…” Alex sighs. “I'm tired,” she admits.

She should be careful with her words. Precise. Measured. Calculated. But Maggie is here, the leather of her jacket creaking as she shifts to get comfortable, and Alex doesn’t know if she’ll ever get another chance to say what needs to be said. “So tired. I miss you, so much. Before you, I never knew I could be happy. Now, without you, I never knew I could hurt this much.”

They aren't touching. Maggie isn't leaning into her side or bumping their shoulders. The space of an inch feels like a chasm, a mile wide and a mile deep. Alex does nothing to close the gap, and neither does Maggie.

Maggie sighs, and the darkness magnifies the sound a hundredfold. In it, Alex can taste the depth of Maggie’s suffering. She did this. She caused Maggie pain, and her own, and for that, she will never forgive herself. She made this amazing woman feel like she wasn't enough. Again. She kicked her out of her home. Again.

Tonight, on the anniversary of that childhood trauma, Maggie came to see her.

“Why are you here?” Alex asks again.

Maggie sighs again and takes another sip of scotch. Silence mixes with darkness, deepening the black every second that passes.

At long last, Maggie speaks. “I dunno. I just… I thought I would start replacing those bad memories with good, starting this year. That we would...” She swallows, and Alex doesn't have to look to see her lip quivering in the effort to hold back tears. “I thought our second Valentine’s would be better than our first. I should have known better.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

Alex doesn’t know what Maggie could be apologizing for. She caused this, and she has no way to fix it. All the calculations and measurements in the world can’t reverse the hurt, can’t take them back to the time they were happy and in love.

“I wish…” Alex finishes her thought with a shake of her head at the impossibility of it all.

“What?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to wish for, what to hope for. I don’t know what you being here means, Maggie.”

Maggie’s shoulder bumps hers as she shrugs. “It means I didn’t want to be alone, and I figured you might need company.” It’s simple, too simple, for the convoluted path that brought them here. They can’t just be each other’s shelter from the storm. Not now. Not anymore.

Alex holds her glass out, and, after a pause, Maggie raises the bottle to clink them together. They both sip. “You got that right,” Alex agrees. “I mean, I could have gone out with Kara, Winn, and J’onn but that… wasn’t what I needed.”

“And this is?”

Risking a sideways glance, Alex is disappointed that Maggie’s hair obscures her face. She misses her face. “Yeah. Good scotch.” She pauses before speaking the truth. “Good company. You.”

Maggie scoffs, nervously running her hand through her hair to hitch it behind her ear. Alex drinks in the view until Maggie becomes aware and returns the gaze.

“Is this what you need?” Alex asks. She fights the heaviness in her limbs to lift her arm and brush the single tear from Maggie’s cheek.

“You’ve always been all I need, Alex. All I’ve ever wanted.”

“Is that why you’re here? To tell me that?”

Maggie hides behind the bottle, bringing it to her lips for long swallow. When she lowers it, the curtain of her hair falls forward like a shroud. “I don’t know why I came. I just knew I couldn’t stay away. I’ve spent the last few months staying away, thinking it would help. But tonight, I dunno. I thought I would never be alone for Valentine’s Day again, and I figured you owed me… something. Company, at the very least.”

Alex thunks her head back, biting her lip and squeezing her eyes closed. “Of all the bad things I’ve done in my life, and let me tell you, I’ve done some doozies, hurting you was the worst. I wish there was something I could do to make up for that.”

Maggie shrugs, trying to shrug away the pain like she did a year ago with a ‘yeah, it’s whatever.’

“We wanted…” Maggie exhales sharply before trying again. “We want different things.”

“Do we?”

“You want kids, I don’t.”

That was what Alex wanted, that’s true. But she wants something different, now. She wants to stop measuring love, to stop feeling the sharp edges and precise dimensions. The abstraction of children is hard to hold when the reality of loss is right there, holding her down and slowing her heart.

It’s even harder to contemplate when the woman she’s been dreaming about every night and thinking about every day is sitting beside her.

“You are still on my speed dial, you know.” Her voice is light, a counterpoint to the weight of her words, the depth of her confession. “Every day, I have to stop myself from calling you. And every day, I think I should delete your number and force myself to move on. And every day, I don’t do either. Because if I call you, you come back into my life, and I don’t know what to do with that. And if I delete your number, then you are gone, and I can’t bear that. So you exist, on the periphery, always on my mind but never in my arms. And if I never do anything, you’ll always be there.”

“I’m the cat. In the box. Schrodinger’s cat. If you never open the box, I’m neither dead nor alive.”

Alex nods. She prefers to think of it as purgatory, absent the cleansing fire and hope for departure.

“You gotta open the box sometime. Although, frankly, I think even Schrodinger would eventually know the cat is dead by the smell of decomposition with or without opening the box, so I never really took that whole thing seriously.” Maggie laughs and swigs the bottle.

“Spoken like a true homicide detective.”

“It’s a stupid metaphor. For this, at least,” Maggie says with a shake of her head.

They lapse into silence again, and the glass is cool when Alex raises it to her lips. Leather creaks as Maggie stirs. She’s always restless unless she’s sleeping, and some things never change.

Fear grips Alex as she imagines Maggie standing, walking to the door, and leaving without hearing what she needs to hear, what Alex needs her to hear. “I know what I want.” She sighs. It’s too little, too late, but Maggie deserves to know. “I’ve been afraid to admit it, because it feels like I’m being weak. I should be strong and move on. But I want you. I know that now. I want to be happy. With you.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“I know. And I know I only get one and... I blew it. I don't deserve another chance so I'm not asking.”

Maggie huffs out a breath, shifting as she pushes herself off the floor. “I should go.”

Alex nods. Like last time, she doesn't ask her to stay, doesn’t beg her to stay, even though she wants to. It isn't her place.

Maggie hesitates, halfway to the door. She reaches into her back pocket and pulls something out. She sets it on the island and walks resolutely out the door. She doesn't look back.

Alex struggles to get her feet under her, pinpricks of blood rushing into her feet where she's sat on the floor too long. It's a card. A cheap child’s valentine’s card in a thin white envelope, like kids stick in elaborately decorated shoe boxes in grade school.

“Be mine.”


	2. Chapter 2

Head heavy, Maggie props it up with her hand and squints at the paperwork, trying to make her blurry brain focus. It’s no use, and she sighs and reaches for her coffee cup to find it empty. Water, she should be drinking water, but she refills it with the sludge they brew in the bullpen, not wanting to walk all the way to the break room.

Months sober, she’s lost the knack for drinking too much and being fresh first thing in the morning. Back on my bullshit, she thinks, breaking both of her self-imposed exiles in the same night, from alcohol and Alex.

When she’d walked out of Alex’s apartment with the last of her stuff packed in a bag slung over her shoulder, tequila sour in her stomach, she had resolved to break bad habits, and those two went together. Because if she drank, she would break, she would call Alex or show up at her apartment, asking to get back together, and that was not an option.

She had given her everything already, and it still hadn’t been enough.

So Maggie cut them both out of her life. She went back to yoga four or five days a week, started a meditation class, pulled out her old recipe books and started cooking every night instead of ending up at the bar. Eating at home had the added benefit of not risking the chance of running into Alex at one of their regular haunts and, besides, the food tasted off at those places. And she knew she would never run into Alex at yoga or, heaven forbid, a meditation class.

Her goal was to find some sense of peace within herself, some hidden core of strength to hold her, like gravity, close to the ground, to the here and now. Her restless thoughts, her restless body, needed a center to keep her focused on the present, not the future and certainly not the past. Both of those were thoroughly owned by Alex, not her. So she had plodded along, keeping herself from temptation, like an ascetic trying to train her body and mind to avoid sin.

She was doing so well on the straight and narrow, until last night. She sighs again and drains her cup, wincing at the bitter, burnt taste.

She deserves it.

Whatever had prompted her, on Valentine’s of all days, to unpack the last of her boxes from moving out of Alex’s, it had been a bad idea. In fact, in the litany of bad ideas, that was one of her worst.

After an hour of crying over pictures in a photo album she hadn’t seen Alex sneak into the box, Maggie had needed a drink. And while every bar she passed had alcohol, they had all been packed with happy couples and she knew she could find better scotch at Alex’s.

Had she expected to find Alex, alone and miserable, on the floor of her kitchen? In hindsight, she doesn’t know. Had Maggie hoped she would? Was she gratified Alex seemed as unhappy and unable to move on as she was? Was she happy to see Alex heartbroken and sad?

Some small, awful, petty part of her was.

It had all been a setup, and she’d played herself. From slipping that card in her pocket as she left the precinct, one of the extras from a volunteer event earlier in the day, to opening that box that had sat, untouched, in the hall closet, for months, she had set herself up to see Alex.

It was as close to a cry for help, or begging, as she got. She almost hadn’t opened the door, almost hadn’t left the card, but she could admit, now in the light of day, that she had wanted it. Even if just to torture herself further, she wanted to see Alex.

A loud thunk startles her out of her reverie. “You should tell your new girlfriend that she’s a day late,” growls the desk sergeant as he sets the heavy crystal vase with an elaborate arrangement of red roses on Maggie’s desk.

Maggie blinks at the flowers, wondering if her hung-over, sleep-deprived brain is playing tricks on her. “I don’t have…” He doesn’t wait for her explanation, just stomps away, and Maggie shakes her head and reaches for the card. It’s not the regular size for a florist card, and Maggie can see the cartoon dog through the envelope.

It’s not signed but Maggie knows the sender.

The bouquet is the epitome of everything she hates about Valentine’s Day, the expense, the wastefulness, but the flowers are beautiful and their scent fills the room. She’s charmed, in spite of herself, and she fights back the now-unfamiliar sensation of warmth and happiness running through her body and heating her cheeks.

Maggie taps the card against the edge of her desk absently. She’s not sure what she intended, leaving the card at Alex’s, and she doesn’t know what Alex made of it. Something, obviously.

Which was probably what she intended in the first place.

She tries to ignore the giant symbol of something on her desk, but everyone in the bullpen, and the rest of the fucking station as well, comes up to admire and ask about her new, possibly calendar-challenged, girlfriend.

“Wow, she really fucked up Valentine’s Day, huh?” It’s a different desk officer, hand-delivering a bag with, from the smell, Maggie’s favorite hangover lunch, vegan chili cheese fries. She gestures toward the flowers.

Her stomach is already growling, so Maggie barely registers the question. “Something like that.” She rips into the bag, containing another cheesy cheap Valentine’s Day card with a firefighter dog. The aflame reference on the card is probably a joke about the extra jalapenos she, to quote Alex, shovels on her fries.

So she loads up her fries, everything packaged separately to keep the fries hot and crisp, just the way she likes, and tries not to think about how compatible they were, in all but two areas: food and children.

By the time a mid-afternoon cup of coffee and brownie land on her desk, Maggie is equal parts annoyed and exhilarated. The ‘I’m sweet on you’ card is classic Alex, cheesy enough to make her groan out loud but sweet enough she smiles… on the inside. She doesn’t let it show to her colleagues, all of whom are watching her with not-so-veiled jealousy as she finishes her dessert.

There’s still no indication as to where this is all heading, and Maggie’s guts start to twist in anticipation as she turns off her computer and picks up the vase. If she’s disappointed that Alex isn’t waiting for her in the parking lot, she buries the feeling down deep.

As Maggie approaches her apartment, she finds a dress box leaning against her door. She juggles the box and the flowers awkwardly as she makes her way inside.

The card reads, simply, “Same time, same place.”

***

Maggie now understands what it’s like to walk alone past knowing smiles on her way to the ballroom, excitement and anxiety building so that her heart races. She glares at one particularly lecherous look at the beautiful yet tight dress Alex picked out for her.

Pausing outside the doorway, she takes a deep breath. The speed at which Alex jumped on her olive branch, after months of silence, after saying she wasn’t going to ask for another chance, after letting Maggie walk out the door last night, has Maggie’s head spinning.

But Alex said she wants Maggie, and if Maggie knows anything about Alex Danvers, it’s that she goes after what she wants. If only she had had that clarity of purpose a few months ago…

Maggie isn’t sure what she wants, but she knows living her life trying to avoid any thought or contact with Alex isn’t working. There’s only so much she can remove from her life before she ends up hollow.

A strong sense of deja vu overwhelms her as she pulls open the door, the bottle of champagne chilling beside chocolate-covered strawberries. Except that it’s Alex standing there, relief visible on her face when she sees Maggie enter.

She’s wearing a suit, not one of her faux-FBI power suits. It’s black, masculine cut, and she’s wearing a matching vest underneath the jacket. Maggie realizes with a pleasant jolt to her gut that Alex isn’t wearing a shirt under the vest.

If Maggie imagines pressing her lips to Alex’s exposed skin while undoing the buttons to that vest, well, she’s pretty sure that’s exactly what Alex is going for.

“Wow…” Alex’s words are breathless, and she blinks back tears, as if just seeing Maggie is overwhelming. “You look amazing.” She reaches out and catches Maggie’s hand. The contact is electric. “Thank you for coming.”

It feels like they’ve been here before, and Maggie stops herself from saying, “I almost didn’t,” even if it was true. Because she debated for a long time before putting on the dress, knowing that her path, to both heaven and hell, runs through Alex. It’s in her best interest to protect herself, but when has she ever been able to protect herself from Alex?

It’s Alex, and Maggie would still break every single rule for her.

The intensity of Alex’s smile is too much, so Maggie glances to the side, to the table, where another Valentine’s card sits. She smirks. “Trying to tell me something, Danvers?”

“What?” Alex is puzzled, and Maggie’s grin widens. She’s still so gullible.

Maggie gestures toward the card. “So that’s not a bondage joke?”

Alex’s face flames as two things happen simultaneously: she realizes how the card could be construed and, if Maggie is right, she remembers a particularly long, steamy night with silk scarves and ice cubes.

“Oh, that, I mean, that’s not what that’s supposed to… oh, god…” Her eyes are wide and she’s about to apologize, profusely, when Maggie takes pity on her.

“You are too easy,” Maggie says with an amused shake of her head.

Ice broken, Alex tugs her closer with a smile. The smile is soft and tentative, but it gains in confidence when Maggie lets her. Her thumb rubs over the back of Maggie’s hand, and she bites the inside of her cheek. “Last night, I told you I wasn’t going to ask for a second chance, and I’m not.”

“You’re not?”

“No, I’m just going to assume that you being here means you want to try again, and I’m going to keep assuming until you tell me to stop.” Her eyes slip down to study her shoes before raising to meet Maggie’s again, her lips twitching into a smirk. “I mean, you didn’t send those flowers back to me with some kind of nasty note. Or a grenade.”

“How do you know I didn’t dump them in the trash?” Maggie asks, her eyebrow arching in challenge.

Alex pretends to think on the question for a moment before shrugging her shoulder. “Intuition.” The distance between them shrinks as their bodies drift closer. “And I knew you couldn’t turn down lunch after I saw how much of my scotch you drank last night.”

“Pretty sure that I bought that bottle.”

The banter is comfortable, but Alex’s face gets serious as she runs her fingers through Maggie’s hair. “I meant what I said last night. I want you. Kids or no kids, The card is meant to mean that I'm bound, to you. I can't escape you, and I can't lose you. I lost you, and it's been the worst thing ever.”

"It's been difficult for me too, but we can't just get back together because we're miserable."

"It's not just that I'm miserable. It's not just because I miss you. I've just realized that I'm never going to be happy without you, and I just want to be happy with you." 

The sincerity in Alex's voice is convincing, but even more is the heat of her body. The ends of her hair tickle her neck, and Maggie has to concentrate to hear Alex’s words. There’s so much pain and hurt to get past, but what she really wants is to be in Alex’s arms right now. It's almost impossible to think when she's so close, and Maggie is pretty sure she's about to revert to several of her worst bad habits.

“More than anything, I want you to be happy. I want to spend the rest of my life making you happy,” Alex says quietly. "I want the opportunity to make you happy again."

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Alex strokes up Maggie’s back and pulls her in, and they sway to music. Alex has that look on her face, her eyes hooded as she tangles a hand in Maggie’s hair. They pause, their lips close but not touching, as they breathe each other in.

“I love you. I never stopped loving you. Please believe me.”

Maggie never doubted their love, only their circumstances, but she doesn’t need to say so. She only needs to press her lips to Alex’s, sealing their journey back to each other with a kiss.


End file.
